The MFA program in Art Writing at the School of Visual Arts presents Critical Information, an interdisciplinary graduate student conference examining the contemporary dialogue between art, media, and society. The Critical Information conference provides a critical forum for current scholarship exploring the juncture of media, theory, criticism, and the visual arts. Boris Groys, Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University and Senior Research Fellow at the Karlsruhe University of Arts, will deliver the keynote address, “Art on the Internet.”
An essayist, art critic, curator, media theorist, and Kulturfilosof (philosopher of culture), Boris Groys is the author of many books on art, including Art Power, The Total Art of Stalinism, Medium Religion (with Peter Weibel), The Communist Postscript, and a number of books on the works of, and in dialogue with, Ilya Kabakov. For his keynote speech, Professor Groys will address how since the beginning of the 20th century, art of the historical avant-garde tried to reveal the factual, material, non-fictional dimension of art. Through the Internet this avant-garde impulse finds its realization, its telos. The Internet user is informed about art as a specific kind of reality: as a working process or even life process taking place in the real, off-line world. This does not mean that the aesthetic criteria do not play any role in the presentation of data on the Internet. However, in this case we have to do not with art but with the data design–with the aesthetic presentation of documentation about real art events.
The Critical Information conference showcases an international roster of graduate student participants from a wide cross-section of disciplines, who will present papers and projects on the following six panels: Fragmentation and Trauma; The Art and Poetics of Technical Production; Border / Media / Bodies; Mediating Space; Interdisciplinary; and The Disappearing Identity. More information on the panels and papers, as well as the full schedule of events can be found at http://criticalinformationsva.com/2014-schedule.
CRITICAL INFORMATION ORGANIZATION
Graduate Student Organizing Committee
Cynthia Cruz
Emmanuel Iduma
Michael Johnson
Kaitlyn A. Kramer
Amelia Rina
Elizabeth Sultzer
Faculty Advisor
Russet Lederman
MFA Art Criticism & Writing Chair
David Levi Strauss
MFA Art Criticism & Writing Administrator
Annette Wehrhahn
